S. Rappoport - History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12)

S >> S. Rappoport >> History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12)

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Ptolemy, however, did not attempt the difficult task of uniting the two
races, and of treating the conquered and the conquerors as entitled to
the same privileges. From the time of Necho and Psammetichus, many of
the Greeks who settled in Egypt intermarried with the natives, and very
much laid aside their own habits; and sometimes their offspring, after
a generation or two, became wholly Egyptian. By the Greek laws the
children of these mixed marriages were declared to be barbarians; not
Greeks but Egyptians, and were brought up accordingly. They left the
worship of Jupiter and Juno for that of Isis and Osiris, and perhaps the
more readily for the greater earnestness with which the Egyptian gods
were worshipped. We now trace their descendants by the form of their
skulls, even into the priestly families; and of one hundred mummies
covered with hieroglyphics, taken up from the catacombs near Thebes,
about twenty show a European origin, while of those from the tombs
near Memphis, seventy out of every hundred have lost their Koptic
peculiarities. It is easy to foresee that an important change would
have been wrought in the character of the people and in their political
institutions, if the Greek laws had been humane and wise enough to grant
to the children of mixed marriages the privileges, the education, and
thereby the moral feelings of the more favoured parent; and it is not
too much to suppose, if the Greek law of marriage had been altered by
Ptolemy, that within three centuries above half the nation would have
spoken the Greek language, and boasted of its Greek origin.

[Illustration: 055.jpg THE GOD SERAPIS]

The stimulus given by Ptolemy Soter to the culture of the age has been
already mentioned. The founding of the famous museum and library
of Alexandria may be, perhaps, regarded as the rounding-off of his
political plans for the consolidation of his kingdom. Alexandria became,
in fact, not only a centre of commerce and government, but also the
intellectual capital of the Greeks. But for this supreme importance of
the city, it is doubtful whether the descendants of Ptolemy Lagus could
have continued to rule the Valley of the Nile.

In return for the literature which Greece then gave to Egypt, she gained
the knowledge of papyrus, a tall rush which grows wild near the sources
of the Nile, and was then cultivated in the Egyptian marshes. Before
that time books had been written on linen, wax, bark, or the leaves of
trees; and public records on stone, brass, or lead: but the knowledge of
papyrus was felt by all men of letters like the invention of printing
in modern Europe. Books were then known by many for the first time,
and very little else was afterwards used in Greece or Rome; for, when
parchment was made about two centuries later, it was too costly to be
used as long as papyrus was within reach. Copies were multiplied on
frail strips of this plant, and it was found that mere thoughts, when
worth preserving, were less liable to be destroyed by time than temples
and palaces of the hardest stone.

[Illustration: 056.jpb MANUSCRIPT ON PAPYRUS; HIEROGLYPHICS, THEBES]

While Egypt, under Ptolemy, was thus enjoying the advantages of its
insulated position, and cultivating the arts of peace, the other
provinces were being harassed by the unceasing wars of Alexander's
generals, who were aiming, like Ptolemy, at raising their own power.
Many changes had taken place among them in the short space of eight
years which had passed since the death of Alexander. Philip Arridaeus,
in whose name the provinces had been governed, had been put to death;
Antigonus was master of Asia Minor, with a kingdom more powerful though
not so easily guarded as Egypt; Cassander held Macedonia, and had the
care of the young Alexander AEgus, who was then called the heir to the
whole of his father's wide conquests, and whose life, like that of
Arridaeus, was soon to end with his minority; Lysimachus was trying
to form a kingdom in Thrace; and Seleucus had for a brief period held
Babylonia.

Ptolemy bore no part in the wars which brought about these changes,
beyond being once or twice called upon to send troops to guard his
province of Cole-Syria.

[Illustration: 057.jpg Alexander adoring Horus]

But Antigonus, in his ambitious efforts to stretch his power over all
the provinces, had by force or by treachery driven Seleucus out of
Babylon, and forced him to seek Egypt for safety, where Ptolemy received
him with the kindness and good policy which had before gained so many
friends. No arguments of Seleucus were wanting to persuade Ptolemy that
Antigonus was dreaming of universal conquest, and that his next attack
would be upon Egypt. He therefore sent ambassadors to make treaties of
alliance with Cassander and Lysimachus, who readily joined him against
the common enemy.

The large fleet and army which Antigonus got together for the invasion
of Egypt proved his opinion of the strength and skill of Ptolemy. All
Syria, except one or two cities, laid down its arms before him on his
approach. But he found that the whole of the fleet had been already
removed to the ports of Egypt, and he ordered Phoenicia to furnish him
with eight thousand shipbuilders and carpenters, to build galleys from
the forests of Lebanon and Antilibanus, and ordered Syria to send four
hundred and fifty thousand medimni, or nearly three millions of bushels
of wheat, for the use of his army within the year. By these means he
raised his fleet to two hundred and forty-three long galleys or ships of
war.

Ptolemy was for a short time called off from the war in Syria by a
rising in Cyrene. The Cyrenians, who clung to their Doric love of
freedom, and were latterly smarting at its loss, had taken arms and were
besieging the Egyptian, or, as they would have called themselves, the
Macedonian garrison, who had shut themselves up in the citadel. He at
first sent messengers to order the Cyrenians to return to their duty;
but his orders were not listened to; the rebels no doubt thought
themselves safe, as his armies seemed more wanted on the eastern
frontier; his messengers were put to death, and the siege of the citadel
pushed forward with all possible speed. On this he sent a large land
force, followed by a fleet, in order to crush the revolt at a single
blow; and the ringleaders were brought to Alexandria in chains. Magas, a
son of Queen Berenice and stepson of Ptolemy, was then made governor of
Cyrene.

When this trouble at home was put an end to, Ptolemy crossed over to
Cyprus to punish the kings of the little states on that island for
having joined Antigonus. For now that the fate of empires was to be
settled by naval battles the friendship of Cyprus became very important
to the neighbouring states. The large and safe harbours gave to this
island a great value in the naval warfare between Egypt, Phoenicia, and
Asia Minor. Alexander had given it as his opinion that the command
of the sea went with the island of Cyprus. When he held Asia Minor he
called Cyprus the key to Egypt; and with still greater reason might
Ptolemy, looking from Egypt, think that island the key to Phoenicia.
Accordingly he landed there with so large a force that he met with no
resistance. He added Cyprus to the rest of his dominions: he banished
the kings, and made Nicocreon governor of the whole island.

From Cyprus, Ptolemy landed with his army in Upper Syria, as the
northern part of that country was called, while the part nearer to
Palestine was called Coele-Syria. Here he took the towns of Posideion
and Potami-Caron, and then marching hastily into Asia Minor he took
Malms, a city of Cilicia. Having rewarded his soldiers with the booty
there seized, he again embarked and returned to Alexandria. This inroad
seems to have been meant to draw off the enemy from Coele-Syria; and it
had the wished-for effect, for Demetrius, who commanded the forces of
his father Antigonus in that quarter, marched northward to the relief
of Cilicia, but he did not arrive there till Ptolemy's fleet was already
under sail for its return journey to Egypt.

Ptolemy, on reaching Alexandria, set his army in motion towards
Pelusium, on its way to Palestine. His forces were eighteen thousand
foot and four thousand horse, part Macedonians, as the Greeks living in
Egypt were always called, and part mercenaries, followed by a crowd of
Egyptians, of whom some were armed for battle, and some were to take
care of the baggage. He had twenty-two thousand Greeks, and was met at
Gaza by the young Demetrius with an army of eleven thousand foot and
twenty-three hundred horse, followed by forty-three elephants and a
body of light-armed barbarians, who, like the Egyptians in the army of
Ptolemy, were not counted. But the youthful courage of Demetrius was no
match for the cool skill and larger army of Ptolemy; the elephants were
easily stopped by iron hurdles, and the Egyptian army, after gaining a
complete victory, entered Gaza, while Demetrius fled to Azotus. Ptolemy,
in his victory, showed a generosity unknown in modern warfare; he not
only gave leave to the conquered army to bury their dead, but sent back
the whole of the royal baggage which had fallen into his hands, and also
those personal friends of Demetrius who were found among the prisoners;
that is to say, all those who wished to depart, as the larger part of
these Greek armies were equally ready to fight on either side.

By this victory the whole of Phoenicia was again joined to Egypt, and
Seleucus regained Babylonia. There, by following the example of Ptolemy
in his good treatment of the people, and in leaving them their own laws
and religion, he founded a monarchy, and gave his name to a race of
kings which rivalled even the Lagidae. He raised up again for a short
time the throne of Nebuchadnezzar. But it was only for a short time. The
Chal-dees and Assyrians now yielded the first rank to the Greeks who
had settled among them; and the Greeks were more numerous in the Syrian
portion of his empire. Accordingly Seleucus built a new capital on
the river Orontes, and named it Antioch after his father. Babylon then
yielded the same obedience to this new Greek city that Memphis paid
to Alexandria. Assyria and Babylonia became subject provinces; and
the successors of Seleucus, who came to be known as Selucids, styled
themselves not kings of Babylon but of Syria.

When Antigonus, who was in Phrygia on the other side of his kingdom,
heard that his son Demetrius had been beaten at Gaza, he marched with
all his forces to give battle to Ptolemy. He soon crossed Mount Taurus,
the lofty range which divides Asia Minor from Syria and Mesopotamia, and
joined his camp to that of his son in Upper Syria. But Ptolemy had gone
through life without ever making a hazardous move; not indeed without
ever suffering a loss, but without ever fighting a battle when its loss
would have ruined him, and he did not choose to risk his kingdom against
the far larger forces of Antigonus. Therefore, with the advice of his
council of generals, he levelled the fortifications of Acre, Joppa,
Samaria, and Gaza, and withdrew his forces and treasure into Egypt,
leaving the desert between himself and the army of Antigonus.

Antigonus could not safely attempt to march through the desert in the
face of Ptolemy's army. He had, therefore, first, either to conquer or
gain the friendship of the Nabataeans, a warlike race of Arabs, who held
the north of Arabia; and then he might march by Petra, Mount Sinai, and
the coast of the Red Sea, without being in want of water for his army.
The Nabataeans were the tribe at an earlier time called Edomites. But
they lost that name when they carried it to the southern portion of
Judaea, then called Idumaea; for when the Jews regained Idumaea, they
called these Edomites of the desert Nebaoth or Nabataeans. The Nabataens
professed neutrality between Antigonus and Ptolemy, the two contending
powers; but the mild temper of Ptolemy had so far gained their
friendship that the haughty Antigonus, though he did not refuse their
pledges of peace, secretly made up his mind to conquer them. Petra, the
city of the Nabataeans, is in a narrow valley between steep overhanging
rocks, so difficult of approach that a handful of men could guard it
against the largest army. Not more than two horsemen can ride abreast
through the chasm in the rock by which it is entered from the east,
while the other entrance from the west is down a hillside too steep for
a loaded camel.

[Illustration: 062.jpg ON THE COAST OF THE RED SEA]

The Eastern proverb reminds us that "Water is the chief thing;" and
a large stream within the valley, in addition to the strength of the
fortress, made it a favourite resting-place for caravans, which, whether
they were coming from Tyre or Jerusalem, were forced to pass by this
city in their way to the Incense Country of Arabia Felix, or to the
Elanitic Gulf of the Red Sea, and for other caravans from Egypt to Dedam
on the Persian Gulf. These warlike Arabs seem to have received a toll
from the caravans, and they held their rocky fastness unconquered by
the great nations which surrounded them. Their temples and tombs were
cut out of the live rock, and hence the city was by the Jews named
Selah, (the rock), and by the Greeks named Petra, from which last the
country was sometimes called Arabia Petraea.

Antigonus heard that the Nabataeans had left Petra less guarded than
usual, and had gone to a neighbouring fair, probably to meet a caravan
from the south, and to receive spices in exchange for the woollen goods
from Tyre. He therefore sent forward four thousand light-armed foot and
six hundred horse, who overpowered the guard and seized the city. The
Arabs, when they heard of what had happened, returned in the night,
surrounded the place, came upon the Greeks from above, by paths known
only to themselves, and overcame them with such slaughter that, out of
the four thousand six hundred men, only fifty returned to Antigonus to
tell the tale.

The Nabataeans then sent to Antigonus to complain of this crafty attack
being made upon Petra after they had received from him a promise of
friendship. He endeavoured to put them off their guard by disowning the
acts of his general; he sent them home with promises of peace, but at
the same time sent forward his son Demetrius, with four thousand horse
and four thousand foot, to take revenge upon them, and again seize their
city. But the Arabs were this time upon their guard; the nature of
the place was as unfavourable to the Greek arms and warfare as it was
favourable to the Arabs; and these eight thousand men, the flower of the
army, under brave Demetrius, were unable to force their way through the
narrow pass into this remarkable city.

Had Antigonus been master of the sea, he might perhaps have marched
through the desert along the coast of the Mediterranean to Pelusium,
with his fleet to wait upon his army, as Perdiccas had done. But
without this, the only way that he could enter Egypt was through the
neighbourhood of Petra, and then along the same path which the Jews are
supposed to have followed; and the stop thus put upon the invasion of
Egypt by this little city shows us the strength of Ptolemy's eastern
frontier. Antigonus then led his army northward, leaving the kingdom of
Egypt unattacked.

This retreat was followed by a treaty of peace between these generals,
by which it was agreed that each should keep the country that he then
held; that Cassan-der should govern Macedonia until Alexander AEgus, the
son of Alexander the Great, should be of age; that Lysimachus should
keep Thrace, Ptolemy Egypt, and Antigonus Asia Minor and Palestine; and
each wishing to be looked upon as the friend of the soldiers by whom
his power was upheld, and the whole of these wide conquests kept in awe,
added the very unnecessary article, that the Greeks living in each of
these countries should be governed according to their own laws.

All the provinces held by these generals became more or less Greek
kingdoms, yet in no one did so many Greeks settle as in Lower Egypt.
Though the rest of Egypt was governed by Egyptian laws and judges, the
city of Alexandria was under Macedonian law. It did not form part of the
nome of Hermopolites in which it was built. It scarcely formed a part of
Egypt, but was a Greek state in its neighbourhood, holding the Egyptians
in a state of slavery. In that city no Egyptian could live without
feeling himself of a conquered race. He was not admitted to the
privileges of Macedonian citizenship, while they were at once granted to
every Greek, and soon to every Jew, who would settle there.

By the treaty just spoken of, Ptolemy, in the thirteenth year after the
death of Alexander, was left undisputed master of Egypt. During these
years he had not only gained the love of the Egyptians and Alexandrians
by his wise and just government, but had won their respect as a general
by the skill with which he had kept the war at a distance. He had lost
and won battles in Syria, in Asia Minor, in the island of Cyprus, and at
sea; but since Perdiccas marched against him, before he had a force to
defend himself with, no foreign army had drunk the sacred waters of the
Nile.

It was under the government of Ptolemy that the wonders of Upper Egypt
were first seen by any Greeks who had leisure, a love of knowledge, and
enough of literature, to examine carefully and to describe what they
saw. Loose and highly coloured accounts of the wealth of Thebes
had reached Greece even before the time of Homer, and again through
Herodotus and other travellers in the Delta; but nothing was certainly
known of it till it was visited by Hecataeus of Abdera, who, among other
works, wrote a history of the Hyperborean or northern nations, and also
a history, or rather a description of Egypt, part of which we now read
in the pages of Dio-dorus Siculus. When he travelled in Upper Egypt,
Thebes, though still a populous city, was more thought of by the
antiquary than by the statesman. Its wealth, however, was still great;
and when, under the just government of Ptolemy, it was no longer
necessary for the priests to hide their treasures, it was found that the
temples still held the very large sum of three hundred talents of gold,
and two thousand three hundred talents of silver, or above five million
dollars, which had escaped the plundering hands of the Persian satraps.
Many of the Theban tombs, which are sets of rooms tunnelled into the
hills on the Libyan side of the Nile, had even then been opened to
gratify the curiosity of the learned or the greediness of the conqueror.
Forty-seven royal tombs were mentioned in the records of the priests,
of which the entrances had been covered up with earth, and hidden in
the sloping sides of the hills, in the hope that they might remain
undisturbed and unplundered, and might keep safe the embalmed bodies
of the kings till they should rise again at the end of the world; and
seventeen of these had already been found out and broken open. Hecataeus
was told that the other tombs had been before destroyed; and we owe it,
perhaps, to this mistake that they remained unopened for more than two
thousand years longer, to reward the searches of modern travellers, and
to unfold to us the history of their builders.

The Memnonium, the great palace of Ramses II., was then standing; and
though it had been plundered by the Persians, the building itself was
unhurt. Its massive walls had scarcely felt the wear of the centuries
which had rolled over them. Hecataaus measured its rooms, its
courtyards, and its avenue of sphinxes; and by his measurements we can
now distinguish its ruins from those of the other palaces of Thebes. One
of its rooms, perhaps after the days of its builder, had been fitted up
as a library, and held the histories and records of the priests; but the
golden zodiac, or circle, on which were engraved the days of the year,
with the celestial bodies seen to rise at sunrise and set at sunset,
by which each day was known, had been taken away by Cambyses. Hecataaus
also saw the three other palace-temples of Thebes, which we now call
by the names of the villages in which they stand, namely, of Luxor, of
Karnak, and of Medinet-Habu. But the Greeks, in their accounts of
Egypt, have sadly puzzled us by their careless alteration of names from
similarity of sound. To Miamun Ramses, they gave the common Greek name
Memnon; and the city of Hahiroth they called Heroopolis, as if it meant
the _city of heroes_. The capital of Upper Egypt, which was called The
City, as a capital is often called, or in Koptic, _Tape or Thabou_, they
named Thebes, and in their mythology they confounded it with Thebes in
Bootia. The city of the god Kneph they called Canopus, and said it
was so named after the pilot of Menelaus. The hill of Toorah opposite
Memphis they called the Trojan mountain. One of the oldest cities in
Egypt, This, or with the prefix for city, Abouthis, they called Abydos,
and then said that it was colonised by Milesians from Abydos in Asia.
In the same careless way have the Greeks given us an account of the
Egyptian gods. They thought them the same as their own, though with new
faces; and, instead of describing their qualities, they have in the main
contented themselves with translating their names.

If Ptolemy did not make his government as much feared by the half-armed
Ethiopians as it was by the well-disciplined Europeans, it must have
been because the Thebans wished to guard their own frontier rather than
because his troops were always wanted against a more powerful enemy; but
the inroads of the Ethiopians were so far from being checked that the
country to the south of Thebes was unsafe for travellers, and no Greek
was able to reach Syene and the lower cataracts during his reign. The
trade through Ethiopia was wholly stopped, and the caravans went from
Thebes to Cosseir to meet the ships which brought the goods of Arabia
and India from the opposite coast of the Red Sea.

In the wars between Egypt and Asia Minor, in which Palestine had the
misfortune to be the prize struggled for and the debatable land on which
the battles were fought, the Jews were often made to smart under
the stern pride of Antigonus, and to rejoice at the milder temper
of Ptolemy. The Egyptians of the Delta and the Jews had always been
friends; and hence, when Ptolemy promised to treat the Jews with the
same kindness as the Greeks, and more than the Egyptians, and held out
all the rights of Macedonian citizenship to those who would settle in
his rising city of Alexandria, he was followed by crowds of industrious
traders, manufacturers, and men of letters. They chose to live in Egypt
in peace and wealth, rather than to stay in Palestine in the daily fear
of having their houses sacked and burnt at every fresh quarrel between
Ptolemy and Antigonus. In Alexandria, a suburb by the sea, on the east
side of the city, was allotted for their use, which was afterwards
included within the fortifications, and thus made a fifth ward of the
Lagid metropolis.

No sooner was the peace agreed upon between the four generals, who were
the most powerful kings in the known world, than Cassander, who held
Macedonia, put to death both the Queen Roxana and her son, the young
Alexander AEgus, then thirteen years old, in whose name these generals
had each governed his kingdom with unlimited sway, and who was then of
an age that the soldiers, the givers of all power, were already
planning to make him the real King of Macedonia and of his father's wide
conquests.

The Macedonian phalanx, which formed the pride and sinews of every
army, were equally held by their deep-rooted loyalty to the memory of
Alexander, whether they were fighting for Ptolemy or for Antigonus, and
equally thought that they were guarding a province for his heir; and it
was through fear of loosening their hold upon the faithfulness of these
their best troops that Ptolemy and his rivals alike chose to govern
their kingdoms under the unpretending title of lieutenants of the King
of Macedonia. Hence, upon the death of Alexander AEgus, there was a
throne, or at least a state prison, left empty for a new claimant.
Polysperchon, an old general of Alexander's army, then thought that he
saw a way to turn Cassander out of Macedonia, by the help of Hercules,
the natural son of Alexander by Barce; and, having proclaimed him king,
he led him with a strong army against Cassander. But Polysperchon wanted
either courage or means for what he had undertaken, and he soon yielded
to the bribes of Cassander and put Hercules to death.

The cities on the southern coast of Asia Minor yielded to Antigonus
obedience as slight as the ties which held them to one another. The
cities of Pamphylia and Cilicia, in their habits as in their situation,
were nearer the Syrians, and famous for their shipping. They all enjoyed
a full share of the trade and piracy of those seas, and were a tempting
prize to Ptolemy. The treaty of peace between the generals never
lessened their jealousy nor wholly stopped the warfare, and the
next year Ptolemy, finding that his troops could hardly keep their
possessions in Cilicia, carried over an army in person to attack the
forces of Antigonus in Lycia. He landed at Phaselis, the frontier town
of Pamphylia, and, having carried that by storm, he moved westward along
the coast of Lycia. He made himself master of Xanthus, the capital,
which was garrisoned by the troops of Antigonus; and then of Caunus, a
strong place on the coast of Caria, with two citadels, one of which he
gained by force and the other by surrender. He then sailed to the island
of Cos, which he gained by the treachery of Ptolemy, the nephew of
Antigonus, who held it for his uncle, but who went over to the Egyptian
king with all his forces. By this success he gained the whole southern
coast of Asia Minor.

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